TACOMA, Wash. (Legal Newsline) - When Washington State Rep. Jim Walsh (R-Aberdeen) introduced a budget amendment to the Washington House of Representatives to appropriate $455,0000 to cover the cost of paying minimum wage to patients in civil confinement hospitals, it was in response to a $24 million ruling a U.S. District Judge issued requiring a contractor to pay minimum wage to non-citizen immigrants who are federally detained.
“It was absolutely targeting a single operating federal facility here,” Walsh said. “In the olden days, the founding fathers would have called it a Bill of Attainder. It was something targeted at one individual company.”
Last October in Tacoma federal court, a jury decided in favor of requiring a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility operated by the GEO Group in Tacoma to pay detainees more than $13 an hour for menial labor based upon the state’s minimum wage.
“Frankly, I found the lawsuit to be a cynical thing,” Walsh told Legal Newsline. “It was a partisan, politically motivated action and my proviso is just trying to make the effect of the lawsuit more widely applied and less targeted at one company.”
Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson sued The GEO Group in 2017, alleging it should be treating persons in the custody of federal immigration authorities as employees. The lawsuit claimed that work performed by detainees was essential and that GEO was unjustly enriched by relying on its volunteer work program to operate the Tacoma facility.
“My objection to the Attorney General's lawsuit is it singled out one company and one institution, and it's bad to try to make public policy from a lawsuit targeted for partisan political reasons against one institution,” Walsh added.
“So, in order to make this fair and make a true public policy, I thought it was important to broaden the effect of the lawsuit to more than just one institution. The Washington state attorney general is a partisan actor. I wish he would be less partisan, put politics aside and try to operate in the best interest of all of the people of the state. Hopefully, in time, he will start doing that."
As previously reported in Legal Newsline, the GEO Group has asked for a stay of enforcement of the combined $23.2 million verdict and judgments while the case is on appeal.
"The district court stayed all proceedings or other efforts to enforce any judgment, except that it left in place the injunction against GEO operating the Northwest ICE Processing Center’s Voluntary Work Program as it has been operating without paying Washington’s general minimum wage to participants," said a GEO spokesperson.
GEO’s opening brief is due on March 21 with response briefs of the State and private plaintiffs due on April 20 and GEO’s reply brief due on May 11.
"Oral argument is not scheduled yet but the Court of Appeals has ordered it to be expedited and set at the first available session after completion of the briefing," the company told Legal Newsline.
When asked whether federal detainees will pay federal taxes on wages or be eligible to file for state unemployment if they stop working, Walsh said he would not support it.
“That is not currently in our statute,” he said. “I don't think it has to go that far. I mean the issues at hand over the lawsuit and the budget proviso merely have to do with the rate that they're paid. There are existing rules around the terms of their employment that aren't changed by either.”
AG Ferguson did not respond to requests for comment.